Analyzing The Theme Of Nature In Literary Devices English Literature Essay

The subject of nature is really of import to each of the texts to be discussed in this essay: The Fat Black Woman ‘s Poems by Grace Nichols ; Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. In a sense, the fact that each work is created within a different literary genre to some extent dictates the indispensable differences amongst them. However, this essay sets out to analyze how, in add-on to comparing literary devices, nature is used as a different jussive mood in each of the selected texts.

Throughout the drama, Willy escapes back into his memories and it is profoundly important, hence, that the countryside is allied to this: ‘I was driving along, you understand? And I was all right. I was even detecting the scenery. You can conceive of, me looking at scenery, on the route every hebdomad of my life. But it ‘s so beautiful up at that place, Linda, the trees are so thick, and the Sun is warm ‘[ 3 ]Loman both belongs in the state and out of it because he has merely used it, as he has used both things and people, to acquire in front. The fact that he has been unsuccessful is hence a treachery of his ain and a generic dream that is ne’er fulfilled nor justified, merely as the narrative he begins to state Linda, his married woman, ends non in revery on the idyllic, as it started, but on loss of control: ‘all of a sudden I ‘m traveling off the route! ‘[ 4 ]Miller uses nature, hence, as an emblem of Willy ‘s supplanting: ‘Many of Willy ‘s activities can be seen as extremely symbolic. He workss seeds merely as he workss false hopes: both will decease and ne’er come to fruition, mostly because the house has become excessively hemmed in by the metropolis. ‘[ 5 ]In add-on, a farther lost dream of Willy ‘s has been connected with nature, that of his brother, Ben ‘s, offer to fall in him and do his luck beyond the suburban life Willy has lived: ‘William, when I walked into the jungle, I was 17. When I walked out I was 21. And, by God, I was rich! ‘[ 6 ]For Willy, hence, nature has become a topographic point of lost hope where ‘the grass do n’t turn any longer ‘[ 7 ]; it does non belong and nor does he: ‘A victim of both a hardhearted capitalist society and his ain ill-conceived dreams, Willy ‘s eventual self-destruction is presented with tragic dimensions. His beliefs may be misguided, but he stays true to them to the terminal. Although he has neither societal nor rational stature, Willy has self-respect, and he strives to keep this as his life falls apart around him. ‘[ 8 ]

Supplanting is besides a major characteristic of Jean Rhys ‘s novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. First published in 1966, it is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte ‘s Jane Eyre, foremost published in 1847. The fresh uses nature as a agency of developing the narration of Rochester ‘s first married woman, Bertha Mason, here known as Antoinette Cosway, a immature adult female who feels herself displaced following the liberation of the slaves who had worked on her household ‘s plantation. ‘The really word “ topographic point ” occurs many times in the novel ‘[ 9 ]and Antoinette seeks consolation in what she sees as an Eden garden, her former place, from which she is cast out: ‘A really of import early set piece is Antoinette ‘s description of the garden at Coulibri, where she was a kid, a garden which was likely based on Rhys ‘s memories of her female parent ‘s household estate at Geneva. It marks childhood as taking topographic point in a damaged Eden. ‘[ 10 ]The description of the garden is therefore really of import to an apprehension of Antoinette and of the manner Rhys uses her connexion with nature to help her character and thematic development:

Our garden was big and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew at that place. But it had gone wild. The waies were overgrown and a odor of dead flowers assorted with the fresh life odor. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the visible radiation was green. Orchids flourished out of range or for some ground non to be touched. One was serpentine looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of foliages hanging from a distorted root. Twice a twelvemonth the octopus orchid flowered – so non an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, fantastic to see. The aroma was really sweet and strong. I ne’er went near it.[ 11 ]

The genitive pronoun with which this paragraph opens instantly establishes the duality of Antoinette ‘s state of affairs. This is her place, it should experience like hers but it does non. The ‘beauty ‘ she infers has a ambidextrous luxuriance because it has ‘gone wild ‘ , symbolic of a land which has lost control, albeit for a positive ground. The ‘living ‘ and the ‘dead ‘ mix and encroach upon one another, and there is a snake in the garden in the ‘snaky ‘ orchids. Furthermore, the ‘twisted root ‘ implies a deformation of what was meant to be, metaphorically repeating Antoinette ‘s supplanting. In add-on, this is non the lone illustration of topographic points looking resonant of temperament and/or state of affairs: ‘Places are highly alive in this novel: the menacing, exuberant garden at Coulibri, the cryptic bathing pool at Coulibri, sunset by the huts of the plantation workers, the route from the small town of Massacre up to Granbois, the sea and sky at sundown from the ajoupa or thatched shelter at Granbois, the bathing pools at Granbois ( the bubbly pool and the nutmeg pool ) the forest where Antoinette ‘s hubby wanders until he is lost, the route to Christophine ‘s place, the trees and bamboos around the house at Granbois. ‘[ 12 ]Here, Antoinette appears at the same time intoxicated and repelled by the ‘sweet and strong ‘ of the garden, which possibly says something about her similarly ambivalent attitude towards those around her and they to her: ‘The image we now have of Rhys and her heroines is that of a inactive, impotent, self-victimized schizotypal personality who, comfy with failure, wields her weakness like a arm — all every bit natural as being female. ‘[ 13 ]The presentation of nature at the ‘honeymoon house ‘ is likewise hard to put, looking to be one thing but really being another, but her former place is ‘a sacred infinite where Antoinette hugs to herself the secret hidden in Coulibri ‘ .[ 14 ]It is, so, these secrets in isolation, echoed in the descriptions of Antoinette ‘s fatherland that make the representation of nature in Wide Sargasso Sea so clearly an jussive mood of the text:

Equally long as Antoinette can retrieve and order the events of her memories into a temporal or causal sequence, make even an semblance of sequence and keep a mensural sense of infinite and clip, so she can keep her life and ego together. Her act of narrative becomes an act of avowal and coherence, a nod to the universe and its conventions, an effort to forestall herself from fade outing. When, in Part Three, Antoinette lies encaged in Thornfield Hall ‘s dark, cold loft, the togss that hold her to the world that the universe perceives as saneness eventually interrupt. These togss are the elements of conventional narrative: additive chronology, sequence, narratorial clarity, distance. She herself admits at this point that ‘time has no significance ‘ ; sequence disintegrates into a confusion of present and past and finally into a dream which narrates her hereafter.[ 15 ]

This has been quoted at length because it addresses many of the literary devices that the novelist, as opposed to the dramatist or poet, can utilize to develop a subject. With respect to nature, it is used by Rhys, as suggested above, to make a temporal infinite for Antoinette that is symbolic of the individuality she has lost. The abandon which is infringing upon the Eden of the garden, subsequently to be wholly destroyed, is an illustration of the manner in which the novelist can utilize one strong image to take into another, both being resonant of the yesteryear. Indeed, once more as stated above, the act of stating the narrative creates the character in the head of the reader and the locations in which she is placed are connected to that, as is the temporal disruption which memory green goodss and which is frequently, as with Antoinette, declarative mood of her province of head. The evocation of nature as a turbulent and affectional presence adds to this, with the sea as the ultimate semiotic of challenge, pandemonium and disruption.

Grace Nichols ‘ 2nd aggregation of poetry, The Fat Black Woman ‘s Poems, published in 1984, besides uses nature to arouse a peculiar image. However, as this is poesy, the lingual and literary devices used are really different from either those of the dramatist and/or novelist. ‘Nichols grew up in Guyana ‘[ 16 ]but has made her life and calling in England, ‘she has lived and worked in Britain since 1977 ‘[ 17 ], and this cross-cultural jussive mood is really much evident in her work: ‘her poems often acknowledge the foreigner clime, geographics, and civilization of England ‘s metropoliss ‘[ 18 ]Within The Fat Black Woman ‘s Poems, Nichols seeks to arouse a different perceptual experience of beauty from that which is shown in white Western civilization: ‘Nichols besides deploys the fat black adult female as a powerful challenge to the dictatorship of Western impressions of female beauty ‘[ 19 ]and therefore ‘engender a new heroine, a adult female who revises the aesthetic of female beauty. ‘[ 20 ]One of the techniques Nichols employs to make this is uniting nature with an facet of the physical ego, as here in ‘Thoughts floating through the fat black adult female ‘s caput while holding a full bubble bath ‘ :

Steatopygous sky

Steatopygous sea

Steatopygous moving ridges

Steatopygous me[ 21 ]

The unfamiliar word, ‘steatopygous ‘ ( intending holding to the full rounded natess ) is repeated for accent and juxtaposed with images of nature so as to bring forth an emblem of the black adult female as stopping point to nature, her organic structure shaped like the sky, moving ridges and sea. Nichols is authorising black adult females in image by making this as she does by giving the black adult female her ain alone voice: ‘In doing the fat black adult female the speech production topic of many of these verse forms, Nichols signals her refusal to busy the topic ( erectile dysfunction ) place designated for the black adult female by history and to take a firm stand on more complex subjectivenesss. ‘[ 22 ]Nichols is besides concerned that the voice should look realistic and hence the natural images perform yet another map: ‘Like many Afro-Caribbean authors, Nichols infuses her poesy with the religious energy of the tradition of adult females before her, a tradition that has little written record. ‘[ 23 ]

In another verse form from the aggregation, ‘Beauty ‘ , this reproduction of a different image of physical entreaty can besides be seen to be connected with nature:

Beauty

is a fat black adult female

walking the Fieldss

pressing a breezed

hibiscus

to her cheek

while the Sun lights up her pess

Beauty

is a fat black adult female

siting the moving ridges

floating in happy limbo

while the sea turns back

to embrace her form[ 24 ]

Again, the adult female is juxtaposed with nature, supplying a integrity between the character and her milieus which is both actual and metaphorical. Repeat is used one time more by the poet to underscore the connexion between the subject of the aggregation and beauty in abstract. Indeed, the word ‘Beauty ‘ , the merely capitalised word in the verse form, is set entirely on a line, as is ‘hibiscus ‘ , as if to emphasize its importance as an emblem or iconic of what Nichols says is an imperative i.e. that this is what beauty unambiguously is. There is a common embracing between the adult female and nature, she ‘pressing ‘ the ‘hibiscus/to her cheek ‘ and ‘the sea bend [ ing ] back/to hug her form ‘ . It is as if Nichols is proposing that the ‘fat black adult female ‘ who is ‘riding the waves/drifting in happy limbo ‘ is in unison with nature and recognised by it as being so. All of nature, so, like ‘the Sun [ that ] lights up her pess ‘ is lauding her and she it. There is no punctuation in the poetries, underscoring the smooth, natural flow of the descriptions and the manner in which they are intended to connote all that is inherently natural. As Nichols writes in ‘The Assertion ‘ , ‘This is my birthright ‘[ 25 ]and therefore the probe of beauty within the verse forms becomes a socio-political jussive mood, excessively.

In decision, all three texts – Miller ‘s Death of a Salesman, Rhys ‘s Wide Sargasso Sea and Nichols ‘ The Fat Black Woman ‘s Poems – all use nature as a manner of enlarging upon and more efficaciously showing their cardinal concerns. An of import component of this is the manner in which hapless false belief is used by the writers, i.e. nature reflecting and/or proposing a temper or subject. As the three texts discussed here are from different genres, they of class usage nature in different ways, using different literary devices, as has been shown. However, for each of the writers nature is singularly of import and enriches the single texts immeasurably. In the concluding analysis, hence, it might be suggested, so, that nature itself becomes about a communicative character within each of the really different plants discussed within this essay, as its importance to the creative activity and communicating of each can non be overestimated.